Lemmy world moderation as usual using "anti-semitism" as a cudgel against Humanitarian beliefs.
Lemmy world moderation as usual using "anti-semitism" as a cudgel against Humanitarian beliefs.
So apparently for lemmy.world mods pointing out that the word "anti-semite" is far more used than "antigypsyism, anti-Romanyism, antiziganism, ziganophobia, or Romaphobia” even though the Nazis targetted both Jews and Roma in the Holocaust, is, somehow, "Criticizing Jewish people as a whole".
Or maybe it's the whole "I don't care about any one specific race, I care about people and think it's always unjusct when people are treated differently based on things they were born with, such as race" that was deemed "Criticizing Jewish people as a whole".
Good old lemmy.world: they were called on it repeatedly so eventually walked back on the whole "criticizing Israel is anti-semitic" but apparently if you don't go along with the view that racism against a very specific group is much worse than racism against people from other groups, then you must be against that specific ethnic group.
My comment in text for reference:
All clearly as frequently used as "anti-semitism" /s
And yeah, I don't care about race, any race, I care about people, which includes that they're not unjustly treated for things that were not their choice, such as the race they were born into.
It's Racists who feel the need to care about a race or races, defending things for some races which they do noit defend for others, doing little performances about how others must care about those races too and that those who don't "are against those races" - for them race comes first, defining a person and dictating how they should be treated.
For Humanists race is something that should be of as little importance to how somebody is treated as the color of their eyes or how tall they are, and yet they see again and again race weponized by Racists to treat people differently even though those people haven't actually earned such treatment through their actions: in other words race fro Humanists is something that should be irrelevant yet has been turned by others into a pivot for injustice.
It's pretty obvious from your little performance which one you are
Today, "Antisemitism" is a global envelope word for criticising anything the Israeli government does.
Okay, I really don't have the energy or health capacity for getting into an argument, so I hate myself for doing this, but since no one else speaks up:
No, Nazis did not target Roma in the same way as Jewish people. While both were seen as "rootless" and "parasitic", Jews were seen as evil, behind every misfortune, infiltrators, conspirators, actively behind every great crime in history. Eliminating Jews symbollically and materially was absolutely central to Nazi ideology, eliminating Roma was not.
This was also not an invention by the Nazis, but has had a long tradition in Europe (e.g. the myth of Jews killing Jesus making them a force of genuine evil in the eyes of many Christian thinkers) and, yes, also the Arab world, where it really took off with the rise of nationalism, similarily to how it was in Europe.
The claim of the second comment, of "but what about Roma [or Poles, or Slavs more broadly]" is used all too frequently to distract from the totality of extermination that was planned and carried out. Not "just" colonialist genocide, not "just" eliminating "unworthy life", but a genuine belief in eradicating evil, that characterised the Holocaust, targeting Jews specifically, as the "architects of evil."
And the claim that now, Jewish people have simply moved into the "Übermensch" category, as in the second comment shown, is precisely prescribing those attributes to them - as a people that now plots to destroy other ethnicities for being unworthy. That is way beyond criticising the genocide in Palestine as a colonial-paranoid genocide. Without knowing more of the context, its hard to say how heated things got, and what your underlying idea was, but you did cross lines here. It is possible to oppose genocide and settler violence without crossing those lines.
You're wrong about antiziganist Nazi views:
Under Adolf Hitler, a supplementary decree to the Nuremberg Laws was issued on 26 November 1935, classifying the Romani people (or Roma) as "enemies of the race-based state", thereby placing them in the same category as the Jews. (source, see also here)
So, no, Roma people are not in the same category as Poles and Slavs when it comes to the Holocaust. They are actually in the same category as Jews, Hitler put them there.
Antiziganism has deep deep roots in Europe, and has its own version of the blood libel. That Europeans are often completely oblivious of the depth and breadth of the problem is just further proof of how deep rooted and pervasive it is. For example, almost nobody know that the Roma were legally chattel slaves in Romania until the 1850s. For another example, Roma communities right now face systemic incrimination and racism all over Europe and it simply is not an issue. There is no continent-wide Roma Lives Matter movement, there is no Roma History Month, there is no widespread remembrance of the Porajmos, and there is no attempt to link the problems facing Roma people today with that legacy. There are no Oscar awarded movies about them, their stories and their suffering. The main name used for them is still a slur. Roma history is a black hole in the heart of Europe.
NOTE: I only after already writing all this noticed you weren't OP poking me with a second comment, which sort of sent me into a bit of an emotionally laden wall-of-text, because truth be told, I am not all that well at the moment. I will still leave the text as-is, but of course, some of the points or the overall tone is not fair as being directed towards you. I do agree, more broadly, that the Porajmos is underappreciated. I do still maintain, that antisemitism was much more central to Nazi ideology, and their attempts to eliminate Jews were much more driven and fanatical, however.
I really do not want to get into this much further, I have an easier day today, but I am definitely not stress resistant enough at the moment to go into large and long-lasting internet arguments about a topic like this - but I think you are missing why people were disagreeing with you. I can cherry-pick facts from articles too. From the same you posted, which I reviewed before posting my original comment:
For the Jews it was total and everyone knew this—from bankers to pawnbrokers. For the Roma it was selective and not comprehensive. The Roma were only exterminated in a few parts of Europe such as Poland, the Netherlands, Germany and France. In Romania and much of the Balkans, only nomadic Roma and social outcast Roma were deported. This matters and influences the Roma mentality.
Or:
Initially, there was disagreement within the Nazi circles about how to solve the "Gypsy Question". In late 1939 and early 1940, Hans Frank, the General Governor of occupied Poland, refused to accept the 30,000 German and Austrian Roma which were to be deported to his territory. Heinrich Himmler "lobbied to save a handful of pure-blooded Roma", whom he believed to be an ancient Aryan people for his "ethnic reservation", but was opposed by Martin Bormann, who favored deportation for all Roma.
Such a discussion and disagreement all the way up to Himmler would have been completely unthinkable to Nazi ideology to have with Jewish people in the same way. Just imagine Himmler saying, some select Jews should be preserved for their worth as a race. Antisemitism dripped from every facet of Nazi ideology, it was absolutely central, and their efforts to exterminate Jews were going above and beyond all rationality. Them just being in the same category (as I said, both "rootless" and "parasitic", thusly seen as incompatible with nation states) does not mean they were viewed in the exact same way in practice.
You are also missing the point on where you are crossing lines. This is not about antiziganism not being a more pressing issue in many European countries concerning their present politics, it absolutely is, especially but not only in many Easter European states - and it has definitely been addressed in a worse way, the pitiful and late reparations given are a good indication for that.
This is not about that issue not being a fact, it is about you using that to downplay antisemitism and antisemitic structures, which are also still very much alive, and downplaying their absolutely essential and central role in Nazi ideology historically. That is the issue. Even if you did not intend to do it, you reproduced antisemitic dog-whistling and whataboutism.
And even though in some countries it is less than antiziganism for sure (even though - sidenote, a very numbing part of reality is, that antisemitism has been reduced more thoroughly from parts of Europe, because Jews where wiped out and displaced more thoroughly by the Nazis, so there were none left to reproduce the old stereotypes against in everyday live afterwards), and some organisations have wrongly utilised the term "antisemitism" to try and silence opposition - writing out "anti-semitism" in quotes, essentially doing a "but #alllivesmatter" thing about races. That is classic downplaying behaviour.
Antisemitic crimes are well and alive, I know only the statistics for Germany, and not off the top of my head, and I don't have the strength to look those up now, too - but even just casual shit like swastikas spray painted on historical Jewish graveyards (is a regular occurrence around where I live) or videos going viral of some dude off the street saying "I am against Nazis, but I think Hitler did some stuff right concerning some people, you know which ones I mean." - things like that still happen. Hell, Jewish spaces here in Germany are often ridiculously in need of security and high walls, and that is not all just their paranoia - there have been terrorist attacks on them, e.g. in Halle not too long ago for one attack that made bigger news. There have been people wearing the Kippa attacked in the street. That all happens.
Also: Analysing how fascist elements are active in Israel, and some structures have fascist characteristics is completely okay. Resolutely claiming them to be "Nazis" is at best blind towards history and Nazism, and how it actually played out and what its ideological foundations were/are - and at worst, an actual antisemitic dogwhistle you have, I hope accidentally, reproduced.
And again: This is part of a century old history, reproduced from generation to generation, and cause of one of the most horrid crimes committed against humanity - which is why the things you said are indistuingishable from dog whistles and concern trolling and, yes, antisemitism. I truly believe you did not want to communicate it like this, but you did reproduce the same arguments. And it is possible to try and bring across those points without crossing those lines.
I really can't invest much more energy into this, but it seems you are still emotionally invested in your comments getting removed, hence me getting poked with a stick after your first answer. Which is why I did not want to write anything at first, but I hope, even though I must admit, I was getting a bit dismissively emotional there, I could still bring across better what the actual problem was. I don't think I will have another answer in me, especially since probably no one but us two will be reading it anyway days after the fact.
Mate, I don't know in which countries in Europe you lived in, but in all 4 countries of Europe I lived in discrimination against Roma People (or Travellers in the UK) was far, far larger and normalized than discrimination against Jewish People and yet, how many times have you heard or read any of the the words "antigypsyism, anti-Romanyism, antiziganism, ziganophobia, or Romaphobia" versus how many times have you heard or read the word "anti-semitism", especially in the Press?
Now, granted, I'm not old enough to have lived during WWII so I'm not going to claim it wasn't the other way around 80 years ago, but I can most certainly make informed claims about how widespread anti-semitism is in present day Europe compare to other forms of Racism against minorities and how right now claims of anti-semitism are vastly (tens of thousands, maybe millions of times) more often thrown around than for example claims of "Romaphobia" even though the latter is vastly more common.
(And that overuse of "anti-semitism" has become much worse since Israel started it's latest Genocide).
And yeah, special attention towards specific ethnicities and the racial discrimination against them, but not others, not because of the intensity and damage of that discriminations is higher but simply because of the target being a specific race, is itself Racial Descrimination and hence Racism: the Nazis too practiced "positive" discrimination in favor of the "Arian Race" - it's not on the footsteps of Humanists you are walking, it's on a whole different kind of bootprint.
And definitelly I FULLY STAND BY MY WORDS that the Fascist Pigs supporting Israel and its actions by throwing accusations of anti-semitism around against critics of Israel and its actions are just present day Nazism supporters with a different list of ubermenschen - putting a dress and some lipstick on a Fascist Pig and claiming they're "lefties" because now their Racial Discrimination is "positive" doesn't make such creatures any less Fascist Pigs and what they wallow in any less disgustingly racist.
The moderator statement that, when one makes the point that the level of attention and alarm towards a form of discrimination should be proportional to its prevalence and the damage it causes and not be decided solely based on the which race is being targetted, is "Criticizing Jewish people as a whole", just confirms that they follow the full-blown Racist idea that protection is deserved or not based on ethnicity and some ethnicities are more deserving of protection than others.
They were pointing out European Jewry have been the go to chew toy and scapegoat for literal centuries, which was a major sociological factor that helped facilitate the holocaust. Some of that still clings.
This doesn't negate the fact that many people treat Rrom like dogshit in this day and age, they're just pointing out there's a reason why Jewish people are overwhelmingly the majority of holocaust victims
Antisemitism is on the rise in Europe including antisemitic violent crimes. You try down downplay and distract from that by sealioning about Antiziganism.
Naw mod made the right call
It was bait provoked reaction, OP and mod both had axes to grind.
There will be more like thus as the Gaza crimes continue and the perpetrators use the holocaust and anti-semitism as defense.
But having seen real antisemitism myself, this all makes me very nervous. Especially when the inevitable push backs begin in earnest.
But having seen real antisemitism myself, this all makes me very nervous.
I feel the same! I've seen it in person (my gf is jewish), and I've seen some pretty scary posts on Lemmy lately. There are a whole lot of innocent victims on both sides of all this simply because people forget that governments suck, not necessarily all the people. Governments pretty much suck everywhere.
There is genuine anti-semitism out there, a lot of it quiet and unvoiced but none the less translating into discriminatory behaviors against some people purely because they're Jewish.
(You can even see some obvious examples of anti-semitism here in Lemmy - which is supposedly more left of center and having in average more highly educated users - all the time: just notice those people who blame Jews in general for the actions of Israel, something anchored on the "logic" that a whole ethnicity is responsible for the actions of some individuals in it, a pretty common Racist trope)
That doesn't make any less real the chasm between how much the accusation of "anti-semitism" is thrown around and the actual prevalence and the intensity of anti-semitism in the modern era in Europe (which is what that thread was about and the whole thing was under a post entitled "Netanyahu Says It’s Antisemitic For Israeli Soldiers To Describe Their Own Atrocities"), and the profound difference in how racial discrimination against Jews is treated versus how the racial discrimination against other ethnic groups is treated.
This is especially obvious when compared with the Roma People and Romaphobia, because in there the chasm is in the very opposite direction - in Europe the discrimination is huge yet the attention paid to it is minimal.
In my view this reflects the Racist Architecture in the minds of many self-proclaimed anti-racists - racial discrimination isn't looked at by them as a problem of injustices and even injuries committed against individuals by those who use race as an excuse (and hence were logically prioritization of addressing the problem should be based on harm done), instead it's looked at as a race thing - in other words, they're adopting the perspective of the aggressors (who in their twisted minds are "fighting against a race" and have objectified their victims as a "member of the enemy race") rather than that of the victims (who suffer as people, quite independently of race: it's not really their "race" that's hurting or even being harmed, it's them, human beings).
That a moderator actual thinks pointing this out is “Criticizing Jewish people as a whole”, is just extraordinary and in my view probably reflects the moderator's own internalized Racial Discrimination.
I'm pretty sure the nazis killed jewish people because they really hated specifically them. And that had been brooding in Hitler for quite some time already. And then "cleaning" the race was on their agenda, they were big into racism and genocide. It didn't even stop with the Gypsies. They also killed disabled people, "asocial" people, homosexuals, Jehova's witnesses, people opposing them, communists and generally a lot of civillians. Other coordinated efforts without death camps include killing most of the intellectuals in Poland, letting millions of people in the Sovjet Union starve to death. And then we get the regular war on top and those victims.
I think whataboutism or comparing those atrocities might be problematic, unless you offer some context and have something specific in mind.
I agree, the way I put it and without the rest of the context it doesn't translate well the point I was trying to make, and even though I tried to clear my viewpoint in later paragraphs (especially the one about Humanism), it was either badly done, not read by most people or too late to change the idea they made in the previous paragraphs.
Still, from that to it being "Criticizing Jewish people as a whole” as stated by the mod is a huge, huge leap.
My whole point is built as follows:
- Racial discrimination hurts people and is felt very personally by those victimized, as human beings not as "members of a race". It's the aggressors, not the victims, who see it as an attack on a race (in their twisted minds they're "fighting a race" and their victims have been dehumanized to nothing more than "members of a race").
- So adopting the "it's all about races" point of view on racial discrimination is adopting the aggressor's perspective.
- If you don't adopt that viewpoint, then racial discrimination is seen as human beings being treated unjustly and even made to suffer and killed by other human beings who use race as an excuse. That doesn't mean racial discrimination doesn't exist, it just puts it in context as the irrational motives of the aggressors. From that viewpoint the "alarm" and "urgency in addressing" cases of racial discrimination is based on harm caused and how often to the victims, not on what the aggressors think and hence not on the race of the victims.
- So for me looking at it from this later - Humanitarian - perspective, the amount of attention and alarm (as reflected by the constant use of the word "anti-semitism") to racial discrimination specifically against the Jewish People is insanely disproportionate to the present day damage caused by that specific form of racial discrimination compared to racial discrimination against other ethnicities which is barely talked about (in Europe the most shocking example being Romaphobia), a situation which cannot be logically explained by "hurt minimization" (since there the greatest alarm would be about the greatest harm, not which ethnicity is targeted) and hence the only logical explanation left for such behavior is Racial Preference, aka Racial Discrimination, aka Racism.
Absolutely, of this was the 1940s from a Humanitarian perspective it would make total sense that anti-semitism would be the kind of racial discrimination that people should be most alarmed about and fight the hardest against, because that was the one causing the most harm.
80 years later, in the 2020s, anti-semitism is far from one of the top most harmful forms of racial discrimination and hence the disproportionate alarm about it we see in the Press in many countries and even often here, is either artificial for propaganda purposes and/or based on many people holding Racial Preferences (often whilst thinking of themselves as anti-Racists) and hence reacting differently to the various kinds of racial discrimination, purely based on the targeted race rather than on any considerations about the harm being done.
It's in this - pardon my French - pile of shit of widespread Racist perspectives even in the very core of the fight against Racism, that we end up with situations of people claiming "anti-semitism" when somebody criticizes the ethnic Genocide being committed by Israel in Gaza when the worst (when measured by actual harm caused) form of racial discrimination in the present day in the World is probably that of the majority of the Israeli population against Palestinians.
Yeah, you have a point there. I mean if I were you, I'd be a bit more careful, some people are pedantic with the details. You really can't say things like "anti-semitism is far from one of the top most harmful forms of racial discrimination". Or the prasing you used for the 40s. Because jews aren't a race. So it's not racism. The jewish people always have been made up of different ethnicities. And for example Einstein didn't have a different skin color or race than any other German or American (I believe). Same applies to a lot of other jews.
(And secondly I'm not sure what even to make of all of those comparisons. Generally they're used to argue against someone. But it's true that antisemitism isn't the only issue on earth. We regularly also have atrocities in other places. Or millions of people are slaughtered or starve in Africa. Media reports on that for 3 days and then we forget. But what's the point here?)
YDI I think because you are downplaying the importance of antisemitism. You're also doing an antisemitism yourself by saying that Jews in general have become special kind of ubermenschen.
Legitimate antisemitism isn't any more important than any other form of discrimination.
Antisemitism is weaponised to enable the genocide of the Palestinians and terrorise their supporters.
Yes in principle, which is why it shouldn't be minimized. Corollary: the fact that it is should not in itself be used to minimize it ("ah it's all shit, so why do you complain about it").
Yes, but Jews in general don't have anything to do with that. That's an Israeli Zionist tactic and it's very important to make that distinction.
Of course you would think that.
I used to think that too.
We've been exposed all our lives to constant mentions about, concern about, documentaries and even oscar winning films about what was done to the Jewish People 80 years ago by the Nazis.
(Only a person devoid of empathy such as a sociopath or psychopath can see a proper exhibition about the Holocaust and not come out of it both feeling like crying and feeling like punching the face of any Nazi, Neonazi or Supremacist they cross paths with)
Further, there is a whole nation state which is a genocidal colonialist project from its start (remember the Nakba), whose politics have been dominated by Jewish Supremacist parties for decades and which claims to represent the Jewish People, which spends over a billion dollars every year in Propaganda efforts, and the good old "they're attacking our race" has always been a favorite tune of supremacists (just look at the claims right now in the US from the MAGAs that Whites are discriminated against in South Africa for an example from another bunch of supremacists), so of course a lot of time and money has been pumped into alarmism around anti-semitism because that can then be used to shield the Jewish Supremacists from the consequences for their actions, as has been painfully obviously done for their Genocide in Gaza.
The idea that "anti-semitism is the greatest nastiest form of racial discrimination there is" has been hammered into us relentlessly since we were born, including through emotionally powerful mechanisms such as Film so of course our natural relation to it is unthinking and emotional, and the whole subject is treated like a sacred cow.
And then you look at the treatment of Islamophobia right now and, even more extremely, of Romaphobia not just now but even during the Nazi times and since, and you spot the massive contrast between the level of alarm around anti-semitism and the harm caused by it in the present day (NOT almost a century ago, right now) and that related to Islamophobia and maybe even more so Romaphobia: clearly there is massive Racial Discrimination (and hence, Racism) in the very fight against Racial Discrimination.
(Somebody else posting under my post to this forum has shown that the Roma People were for the Nazis in the same category as the Jewish People in the Holocaust and yet, were are the constant mentions about, concern about, documentaries and oscar winning films about the treatment of the Roma People by the Nazis? It's an obvious double standard, and worse, an obvious double standard about people murdered by the Nazis in the fucking Holocaust - an ongoing Holocaust Denialism for some of the victimized ethnicities).
I mean, thank you Zionists for, with their Genocide and abuse of accusations of anti-semitism to defend said Genocide, making me drop the whole sacred cow perspective on it and really think hard about and analyze the subject of anti-semitism and the fight against it in the modern era and thus figure out that there is a very clear, very massive amount of Racial Discrimination on how different kinds of Racism are judged, the attention given to them and the amount of effort that goes into fighting them, and that disproportionately benefits the Jewish People compared to other minorities which are right now also discriminated against far more and far more harmfully, the most extreme being Muslims and the Roma People.
And yeah, Zionism is Nazism with a different kind of ubermenschen - they're both extreme ultra-violent supremacist ethno-Fascist political ideologies casually mass murdering children if they're in the "wrong" ethnicity (called "untermenschen" by the Nazis, "human animals" by the Zionists, with both describing their victims as "vermin") and those always claim that the ethnicity they say they represent is superior to others (specifically, Nazis said of the Arian Race that they were "ubermenschen" whilst Zionists call the Jewish People "God's chose people").
Pointing out that the most rabidly racists and murderous supremacists since the Nazis relate to the race they claim to represent exactly like the Nazis did towards theirs, is only an attack on the race they claim to represent if one believes they actually represent them (something which is only possible to believe using the twisted, racist idea that "all Jews are the same and hence can be represented by a nation") AND is running around with a Racial Preference towards the Jewish ethnicity and thus thinks the supremacists claiming to represent the Jewish People should not be judged by the same metric as the supremacists claiming to represent other ethnicities (and such thinking is the dictionary definition of Racial Descrimination).